The Last Chimera
by Kara
Summary: Hanging with her homegirl, Max learns a little about friendship and a lot about love.


The Last Chimera  
By Kara  
  
Rating: PG (language)  
Spoilers: Rising/Kidz/Female Trouble  
Disclaimer: Original Cindy, Max, and Manticore are property of Cameron and Eglee. "The Last Unicorn" belongs to Peter S. Beagle and ITC Films. An '85 Blazer and a bunch of My Little Ponies belong to me.  
Summary: Hanging out with her homegirl, Max learns a little about friendship, and a lot about love.  
A/N: For J Gorton, who emailed me and said this might make a good idea for a story. I don't know if this was quite what you were looking for, but I hope you enjoy it.   
  
Original Cindy had just flung herself on the couch when the door flew open. Without hesitating, she grabbed the hockey stick that sat next to the couch. "Don't you be tryin' to break in here, fool, or Original Cindy's gonna put the smackdown on your ass," she warned. Her new crib wasn't in a bad part of town, but it wasn't in a great part either. What part of Seattle was great anymore? Even her old neighborhood was trashed out now. The Pulse kicked everything's ass.  
  
But it wasn't a burglar that walked through the open door. It was a black motorcycle, followed by a pissed ninja clad in black. It still took some getting used to, this new knowledge that her best friend Max wasn't the homegirl she said she was. A lot of Max's 'fogginess' made sense now, that, and why she had people asking about her at every turn. "What's wrong, boo?"  
  
Max carefully wheeled her motorcycle into a corner, beginning the task of meticulously polishing every inch with what looked like an old cloth napkin. Though her friend's face was composed, Original Cindy noticed that Max's hands shook. Something definitely wasn't right in Max's state of Denmark. "You can tell me, boo. Is it black-helicopter boys again? Your family? That boy Zack or Sam, or whatever in hell his name is, do you wrong?" As Max hurled the rag in the seat compartment of her motorcycle, Cindy realized what it might be. "Your sugar-daddy pushin' you away now since brother-man broke up your date?"  
  
Cindy watched as Max carefully turned towards the cinderblock and proceeded to beat the hell out of it with her fists. The other pock-marks that marred the half-finished apartment walls suddenly made sense.   
  
"Boo, stop it." A white cloud of dust enveloped Max as her split knuckles left bloody prints on the wall. "Max!" Cindy reached in, putting herself between Max and the wall. She shook her friend. "Max, stop it. The man ain't worth it."  
  
The usually nonchalant look on Max's face faded, leaving her looking vulnerable and young, two emotions that Original Cindy rarely saw on her boo's face. "Both of them. Both of them walked out on me!" she wailed. She stopped, a shocked look on her face. Cindy couldn't help smiling slightly. It wasn't every day that she saw a bad-ass female in black leather wailing over a man. Max chuckled as the tear slipped down the end of her nose. "I can't believe I just said that."  
  
Revved-up female or not, Max was still her boo, and her boo needed her. Cindy shoved Max towards her alcove. "Shower and put on your pajamas, boo. We gonna have a slumber party and get rid of all that tension eatin' away at you. Men don't mean nothin' tonight, aiight?"  
  
Max nodded obediently as she headed off to the bathroom. As soon as Cindy heard the water turn on, she headed off into the kitchenette and began boiling a pot of water. First rule of slumber parties was to have plenty of munchies and even more chocolate. And after two days of living with Max, she'd already noticed how much the girl ate. Luckily, Max hadn't found her stash of chocolate yet. Opening up one of the pots she'd brought with her, Cindy pulled out a Ghiradelli bar she'd found at the market a week before. Pouring some milk into the pot and setting it on the stove, she began to melt the chocolate bar into the milk, turning it a rich dark brown. Diamond had skin that color--tasted as sweet too. She had another year left on her sentence. After that…  
  
"Smells good. What is it?" Max appeared at her shoulder, wrapped in a blue bathrobe. Cindy tried not to laugh, noticing the faded moons and stars on the worn-out terrycloth. While Max had her girly-girl moments, she'd never seemed like the really vulnerable type. But seeing her best friend now, Cindy could almost see all the parts that made up Max Guevara, human or not. Now, she was all child, young girl who still had too much growing up to do and didn't know the way to do it.  
  
"Hot chocolate, boo. Ain't you never had none?" Cindy stirred the liquid carefully, not letting the hot milk burn. "They got the package shit around still. Even if your ass been locked up for the first years of your life or whatever, you still been outside forever, girl." She ladled half of the mixture into a cup. "Taste it. You'll remember."  
  
Max looked at the hot liquid skeptically, but drank it. That was one of the surprising things about her boo--she put up one hella fuss most of the time, but there were moments when she caved without a thought. A look of recognition washed over Max's face as she sipped again. "Hannah gave me this before she left--the woman who picked me up on the side of the road the night we escaped. They didn't have this at Manticore though, just milk, and water." That faraway look clouded up her brown eyes. "We drank so much fortified milk that we could actually taste the vitamins and shit. But this--this is different."  
  
Sometimes, Max seemed just like everyone else. She could've grown up down the street from Cindy, having the same childish arguments with her sisters that Cindy had with Rainie and Keisha. But then those gaps in Max's education would come up, and her moments of fogginess set in. At least it made sense now, in a way.  
  
"How old were you when you escaped, boo? You never said." Cindy poured the rest of the hot chocolate into her own mug and sandk back down on the couch. Max settled next to her, curling her legs under her and looking out the window. She didn't look like a teenage killing machine. She looked…lost.  
  
"Nine, I think. We didn't have birthdays, but on the first day of every new year, the doctors put us through a full physical and noted our height and weight to chart our growth. Zack could remember doing that nine times before we bailed, and he was probably three years older than me."   
  
Cindy tried to remember herself at nine years old. Daddy was still alive then. At nine years old, she was still the quiet little bookworm, hiding out in her room because the real world scared her with all its noise and lights and chaos. That was two years before the Pulse changed everything. "You were nine years old and they were trainin' you to be some super bad-ass soldier. That's just whack." She studied Max over the rim of her mug. "You never had nothin', did you, boo? No Christmas, no birthdays, no mama smackin' your ass with the back of the hairbrush for taking Rainie's doll…"  
  
Max smiled slightly. "I didn't even know what a doll was until they put me in a foster home after the escape. 'Moms' either. We didn't figure out the difference between boys and girls till Tinga and some of the others started developing."  
  
For a moment, Cindy put her arm around Max's shoulders, and the younger girl leaned in close. Max still had the right instincts, even if her childhood was some warped version of military school. And genetically engineered or not, she was still human--at least partially anyway.  
  
"How many brothers and sisters you got, boo? I know Sam or Zack or whatever Golden Boy's name is." Original Cindy didn't know if the world could handle more than one Max. What if there were X-clones running all over the city? Though on the other hand, chances were, seeing Max, she had some bad-ass hot sisters too. One of them might even swing the right way…  
  
The younger girl didn't say anything for a while. Looking down, Cindy noticed Max staring at her mug, her hand shaking slightly. "I think there were 32 of us originally. Manticore classes usually had 30, but I guess they had enough genetic shit left over to whip up two more. I had 15 sisters and 16 brothers at one point. When we named ourselves, there were 28. 24 of us survived up to the month before the escape. 12 of us actually made it out." Max looked up, giving Cindy an attempt at her usual crooked grin. "I guess the X-5 warranty is really shitty or something," she continued in a flippant tone. "Manticore got ripped off when they made us."  
  
Another sip of hot chocolate. Before the silence got too heavy, Original Cindy picked up the battered VCR remote. "Wanna watch a movie, boo? My mama used to put this in the keep Original Cindy and her sisters quiet when we was small." Without waiting for an answer, Cindy hit play, and the familiar opening strains of the intro blasted through the TV set's staticky speakers.  
  
Max settled back against the couch, slouching so that her head rested on Cindy's shoulder. Her boo was friendly and affectionate, but Cindy couldn't remember Max ever actually trying to lean on anyone before. But she'd never seen this far into Max's fogbank either.  
  
"What is this movie?" her best friend asked as the opening sequence began. Her brown eyes were focused on the screen and the tapestries that played across it.  
  
"The Last Unicorn. You'll probably like it, boo. This unicorn's gotta go on this whole hella hella quest to find her family. My mama always liked it cuz there weren't no happily ever after like the Disney shit. The 411's in the real." Her first memories were of this movie, sitting with Keisha and Mama on the bed, waiting for Daddy to get home. Mama always cried at the end, even though she could recite the movie backwards and forward.  
  
They watched in silence at first. Max focused her attention on the movie with the same intensity that she used when she was eating. Watching her best friend react, Cindy could see a lot that Max's childhood had done to her. There were tears in her eyes when Mommy Fortuna locked the tired unicorn up in a cage. Was that what Max was afraid of? Seattle was going to hell in a post-Pulse shoebox, but it hadn't gotten that bad… Grandma McEachin always talked about the slave ships that had raped West Africa of a lot of Cindy's ancestors. Maybe Max was hiding from the same kinda people.  
  
"They did that to us. They tested us to see what we were made of. They locked us up to clock us on our reaction times," Max whispered as Schmendrick tried to magically unlock the cage. "Zane was like that at first. If he picked the lock wrong, an electric charge would zap him. Then it would zap one of us. Syl cried once. Zane never got it wrong after that."  
  
As the harpy and unicorn circled each other in some weird kind of dance, Cindy noticed Max chewing on her lip. "Sisters, you and I," the harpy called to the unicorn. Max's eyes were dark with memories that Cindy wasn't sure she wanted to know about.  
  
Her boo actually laughed at Schmendrick's bumbling as he and the unicorn left to find King Haggard. Cindy wondered if Max saw a rich white boy in the skinny-ass magician. Logan's nose wasn't that big, but she could see a bit of a resemblance in the failed attempts at trying to engage the unicorn. A man walked into a bar and said…Max's voice echoed in Cindy's memory of that night at Crash, back before Logan became Wheels. I don't need you, the unicorn said to Schmendrick. But I'll tolerate your presence anyway.  
  
Out of everyone in the movie, Molly Grue had always been Cindy's favorite. Even though she played ho to a bunch of Robin Hood wannabes, she was a bomb-ass female. She had the smarts, she knew the word, and she wasn't afraid to smack Schmendrick upside the head when he fucked up.  
  
"I am a bearer! I am a dwelling! I am a messenger!" Schmendrick cackled, doing his little magician happy dance.  
  
"You're an idiot!" Molly countered, almost bitch-slapping the pointy hat off the magician's even pointier head.  
  
"She kinda reminds me of Jondy," Max said with a laugh. "Jondy used to smack Zack around the same way." But before Cindy could ask who Jondy was, Max focused back on the movie.  
  
Enter Lir, soft-spoken prince that kinda reminded Cindy of Sketchy. He was aiight in his own dork way, but his moves were as bad as Schmendrick's. Someone forgot to clue him in on the DL.   
  
"The Colonel would've taken his knife away," Max pointed out after Lir sliced his finger while trying to peel potatoes. "Tawny did that once when we were small. Lydecker was gonna cut Tawny's other finger, but Jen cried so hard that he stopped."  
  
Cindy shook her head. "Your childhood was some tripped up shit, boo. No wonder y'all bounced."  
  
"Ain't no doubt," Max said softly.  
  
As the movie progressed, Cindy found herself lost in the movie again. No matter how many times she watched it, the story affected her. The unicorn became the Lady Amalthea and gradually forgot where she came from and her quest. She fell in love with Lir. "Now that I'm a woman," she sang in the same slightly whiny voice that Cindy remembered. "Everything has changed."  
  
Looking over at Max, Cindy noticed a slight smile on the younger girl's face. "Everything has changed," she repeated softly. "She can't forget her quest. She still has to find her family."  
  
Cindy pushed a dark curl back from her roommate's face. "Sometimes it happens, boo. Sometimes you gotta give up on dreams. It's called growin' up."  
  
"I'll find my family." Max's voice held all of its old defiance as she turned back to the movie.  
But the movie taught Cindy at an early age that sometimes the story didn't go according to plan. And sometimes love had to be put on hold so that the story could continue. Maybe the handsome prince got delayed on his way to wake up the princess. Or the beautiful princess who woke up the shy little girl was imprisoned for a while, because of a past she couldn't quite shake.  
  
"She forgot." As the Lady Amalthea leaned in to kiss Prince Lir, Max's jaw actually dropped. "She's just gonna give up like that? What about her family? What about--"  
  
Cindy put her hand over Max's. "S'arright, boo. Sugar forgot, but her friends didn't. They're keepin' her ass on track."  
  
Max managed to chuckle at the skull, as the wine drank itself. As King Haggard came running onto the screen, sword in hand, she cringed back, hands coming up automatically as if she was blocking off a blow. "Fucking Colonel," she whispered as the King hacked into the clock. "You can kiss my genetically-engineered ass, you bastard."  
  
"Unicorn, mermaid, sorceress, no name you would give her would surprise or frighten me," the Prince said to Schmendrick and Molly Grue, lost in the mist below the Castle. "I love whom I love."  
  
"What about chimeras?" Max's voice was soft. "He can't protect her from the Red Bull though. She needs to fight her demons on her own."  
  
As many times as she'd seen the movie, Cindy could feel her eyes welling up when Amalthea pleaded with Schmendrick to allow her to remain a woman. Looking down at Max, she could see tears in her roommate's brown eyes. As Lir reached out to Amalthea, Max actually breathed what sounded like a sob.  
  
"No," the Prince said, a look on his face that reminded Cindy of Logan as he fried the little metal bitch in the back of her neck. "Lady, I am a hero, and heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned. Unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."  
  
And bad-ass Molly Grue turned to Schmendrick. "But what if there isn't a happy ending at all?"  
  
Even dumbass magicians learned their lesson sometimes. "There are no happy endings," Schmendrick answered. Cindy always loved him at this part, because of the wisdom he finally had, and what price he paid for it. "Because nothing ends."  
  
  
  
"Run!" Max screamed when the Red Bull approached. "Fight him! Kill that bastard!" But the Lady Amalthea, once again a unicorn, slunk into the waves to join her brothers and sisters. "If you fight him, you can rescue them. Fight them, dammit! They can't win!" Original Cindy wrapped her arms around Max's shuddering body. Her roommate gulped as the light faded from the unicorn's body. "She can't give up. Manticore can't win."  
  
But the unicorn had a spirit that couldn't be broken. And Cindy was sure that her roommate was made from the same mythical kick-ass genes. The Red Bull charged. Max cried as Prince Lir fell. As the Red Bull turned away in victory, the unicorn turned and charged. Her roommate hooted as the unicorn drove the Red Bull back to the sea. As his back hoof entered into the surf, the unicorns streamed free.  
  
The sea of white bodies never ceased to amaze Cindy. They ran with precision in straight lines, charging out the same way that she imagined knights riding into battle in fairy tales. They surged around the castle, and the walls began to tumble and fall. Haggard fell with them. Max didn't say anything as the King fell, but there was a triumphant look on her face. Manticore had a King Haggard. Max probably dreamed of killing him every night.   
  
The unicorn turned and made her way back to Lir's crumpled body. Max had the same look on his face that she wore when she saw Logan shot all those months ago. The unicorn's horn brushed over Lir's heart once, and then once again. "Once for life, once for love," Cindy said, the same way Mama used to. The unicorn knew the word.  
  
The Prince opened his eyes. "Father? Father, I had that same dream... No. No, I was dead!"  
  
"Sometimes it seems like it happened to someone else. Like maybe it was a story I heard." Max smiled slightly. "Lir's got the know-know. He's in the real." Her face fell again. "But they're fucked, aren't they? She isn't human. And I don't think the prince is into that kinda whacked shit. All for nothing."  
  
Cindy hugged Max around the shoulders. "But her family's free, Max. Ain't that worth the price?"  
  
"Anything's worth that price, especially if your sister gives her life for you. Gotta make it worth the sacrifice." Her smile widened into her usual proud grin. "Ten years and still free, baby. The Colonel and his boys can kiss my ass anytime they want."  
  
Before Lir could say anything to the unicorn, she reared. Sunlight flashed off her horn, and she ran, fading off into the forest.   
  
"I wish I could see her just once more, to - to tell her all that's in my heart. She will never know what I really meant to say," the Prince said. Even Mr. Hero Lir finally got the 411.  
  
"She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. Of all unicorns, she is the only one who knows what regret is - and love." At Schmendrick's words, Cindy looked at Max. Genetically engineered or not, her boo definitely knew regret, and love.  
  
Molly Grue and Schmendrick said goodbye to Lir, who would reign in place of his father from now on. The magician had one last vision of the unicorn, and even there, she forgave him for what he did. "No. Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me   
as long as that joy - save one, and I thank you for that part too. Farewell, good magician. I will try to go home."  
  
I'm alive, the ending credits sang in defiance. I'm alive…  
  
"That's it?" Max demanded with all the impatience of Rainie when she was four. "But what happens to everyone?"   
  
Original Cindy smiled. "When I asked Mama, she said that Schmendrick and Molly Grue hooked up and lived and loved. Molly Grue died of old age, since boo was still human. The unicorn did her wandering, but since she ain't like her brothers and sisters no more, she never got back in the real. But she loved once, and that was all she needed. She had that memory, and Lir always lived on in her heart." She leaned forward, resting her forehead against Max's. "True love, boo. Ain't nothing more powerful, even if it takes a while to get it right."  
  
Max shook her head. "All it did was hurt them. Even if the unicorn looked human, she was still what she was inside--just a freakish Frankenstein smashed inside a pretty body. It would've been better if they never got involved."  
  
"The Prince woulda still gotten his ass shot off, boo," Cindy argued. Rainie mentioned the same thing after Daddy was shot in the riots after the Pulse. "The castle would've still fallen. You can't change the end of the story when it's still movin' on. You can't lock yourself up and live without love, Max. That's what makes you human."  
  
Her roommate shrugged. "We're not like that anyway."  
  
Cindy snorted. "Whatever, boo."  
  
As the credits faded to black, Max set down her empty mug. Her eyes were red, but some of the tension left her face. "Feelin' better, sugar?"   
  
"Yeah." Max gave Cindy a wavering smile. "Just gotta damn the man. Ain't worth the trouble, ain't worth the heartache."  
  
Cindy grinned. "Just lemme know if you comin' to play for the all girl team, boo." She hugged her roommate. "If you ever get that chance to love though, Max, don't be all stone wall and hide yourself away. You got a beautiful soul behind that beautiful face, no matter what tricked-up shit made you. Overstand?"  
  
Max nodded, a serious look in her dark eyes. "'S'all good."  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Logan looked up as Max walked into the office with the same regal grace of a queen in her palace. "Jace's bus left. She's gonna name the baby after me."   
  
"That's great, Max." He wheeled his chair around to face her. There was a soft smile on her face.  
  
She nodded towards the chair as he wheeled out into the kitchen. "We'll get you fixed again. You know that, right?"  
  
"Want some dinner? I made a casserole earlier today," he interrupted, opening the fridge. He knew Max meant well. He knew that she cared as much as she could for him and would do everything in her power to help him, but right now, that wasn't something he wanted to talk about, especially with her. She'd almost kicked his ass to Vancouver and back earlier today. And he didn't want to think about the repercussions suicide would have. He had memory enough of when his father died, a bullet to the head in a bout of drunkenness. Not that the Cale family would ever admit it was suicide. Cales had more class than to stoop to something as base as that.  
  
"I'm always up for chow." Max began pulling plates and cups out of the cupboard, setting the table as if she'd done it every night of her life. It still amazed him, how easily she slipped into his life. He couldn't imagine being without her. It would be harder now, after being on his feet for a few days. And he'd never know what would've happened if Zack hadn't interrupted their dinner. But he couldn't blame Max's brother, even if the man loved Max in a way that made Logan's stomach turn.   
  
The meal was mostly silent. Max devoted most of her attention to the food in front of her, though Logan did catch her eyes on him from time to time.   
  
"How's living with Cindy?"   
  
Max swallowed a mouthful of food. With her elbows on the table and cloth napkin tucked into the neck of her shirt, she was one of the most beautiful sights Logan ever saw, in spite of the gravy smeared across her mouth. "It's weird now. You were the first one to really know what I was, but I don't live with you." To his surprise, Max blushed before rambling on. "She knows and shit, so when I started to shake a few nights ago, she didn't wig out on me like Kendra did a few times." She took a sip of wine. "We watched some movie from before the Pulse about this unicorn who had to find her family."  
  
Logan smiled. "The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle. My mom loved that book." He still had her battered copy, sitting with all the others she used to read to him at night. His mom was the one who instilled the love of mythology into him. She bought him hero comics and read him fairy tales until he loved the romance of chivalry almost as much as she did. "I can see why you might like that movie."  
  
"The ending sucked though. Amalthea turned back into a unicorn, and Lir died alone. No one was happy."  
  
"There are no happy endings, because nothing ends," Logan quoted softly. "That's not in the story. Lir knew it, and so did the unicorn. Reality sucks." His hands found the rims of his wheels under the table. "That's why it's such a good movie. It's real. It doesn't lie to you. But sometimes there are happy endings."  
  
Max shook her head. "Not in my world." That haunted look clouded her dark eyes. She was retreating back into her defensive mode, something that was never a good sign. "Gotta blaze. Thanks for the eats." Before he could say anything, she walked her plate to the kitchen and headed out the door.  
  
For once, Logan left the remaining plate on the table. He wheeled into his bedroom towards the bookshelves under the window. On the top shelf was a row of worn books, some of the few things that he had left of his mother. Picking up one battered paperback, he thumbed through the pages until he found the quote he wanted. "It cannot be ill fortune to have loved a unicorn. Surely it must be the dearest luck of all, though the hardest earned." He never understood what that quote meant before Max. She changed his world in more ways than one when she came through his skylight.  
  
As he slid the book back on the shelf, Logan smiled slightly. It would be a long road, but the ending of their story would be worth it, if they made it. And he'd never know unless he tried. Lir was a prince and a hero, but what made him great as a man was his love. Everything was for Max now, and someday, she might realize that. But love was love, and for now, he was content to love his mythical creature, and be glad that he even had that chance. 


End file.
